Creating the 5-Minute Room
beauty and utility in a bathroom makeover
In order to keep a clean and organized house, I have committed to cleaning it half an hour every day. This allows 15-minutes to sweep, dust and order the kitchen, living room, entryway and downstairs bathroom, and 15 minutes for rotating daily tasks such as vacuuming, cleaning the toilets and shower, de-nastifying the stove, etc. For someone (me) who is impatient and doesn’t particularly enjoy cleaning, half an hour is what I can manage and maintain.
For this to work, rooms must be set up in such a way that every object has a home - a place to be put away quickly and neatly. To create such spaces, I sometimes need to build simple storage areas (shelves, etc.) and create divisions and subdivisions (baskets and boxes) within them.
The first room that I subjected to this treatment was our upstairs bathroom - here is a 4-minute video of the process, which this article details step-by-step.
Before
The bathroom wasn’t particularly ugly, but it wasn’t exactly pretty either. A central cabinet provided ample storage space for bathroom items, but to find them, you had to rummage through the shelves, which had become chaotic. I could have put in baskets, but if you took them out to look through them, there would have been nowhere to set them down. Likewise, there were no surfaces on which to place clothing, etc.
Making a Plan
I decided that a low wardrobe - a chest of drawers - was needed, as it would provide pull-out areas for storing and finding bathroom items, clothing and cleaning products, and the top would serve as a surface for clothes, towels, etc. I did a quick sketch of what that might look like, including a basic idea for some shelves above the wardrobe.
Painting the Space
I removed the existing cabinet by unscrewing it from the wall and sliding it out of the room, then I patched the wall and painted - deciding that I wanted to brighten up the room with some simple white milk paint.
Wardrobe In and Planning Shelves
I set the chest of drawers in place, trying it out with a big painting and a couple of storage cubes for easy shelf space. I later decided against the painting in favor of another level of storage cube.
I spent a bit of time considering whether that would be enough space for storage, and decided that it would not. I looked around the bathroom, holding a piece of wood against the wall at various heights, and realized that the area next to the sink, under the chair rail molding, would be the best spot for shelves. I propped up a few levels of wood and adjusted them until I felt I had a good plan for the shelves.
Making the Shelves
At this point I measured and wrote down the widths and lengths of the shelves and the heights between them. I happened to have appropriately sized boards in the cellar (one-by-four inch and one-by-six inch), and I cut them to the proper lengths on the miter saw.
I affixed small pieces of wood to the walls, to act as shelf supports, and screwed the shelves to them:
You wouldn’t want to use these shelves as a seat or ladder, but for holding light to mid-weight bathroom items they will be fine.
The Bathroom Mirror
Considering the area above the sink, I decided not to re-hang the small white shelf, and to replace the small mirror with a large one. For this, and also to purchase baskets for organizing storage in the wardrobe, I went to TJ Maxx, an “off-price retailer” that also sells overstock, and is generally good for finding reasonably priced items of reasonable quality (when you don’t want to spend more time waiting and hunting for something better). There I found a mirror that was an excellent size and shape for the space (here is a similar mirror and similar baskets on Amazon).
The Big Reveal
Mirror in, items on shelves - here’s how it looks:
This photo was taken a few months ago, and - as I show in the video - it only takes a quick clean and wipe to get it to look like this today. A successful first 5-minute room!
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